McCain's Base

"Nevertheless, he said: 'We have incurred a moral responsibility in Iraq. It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible and premature withdrawal.' "

Does Hillary have some increasingly strange bedfellows? Christopher Orr runs through the list in the New Republic:

"1) Matt Drudge hyped a photo of Obama in Somali garb that he claimed (and the Clinton campaign declined to deny) Clinton staffers had been circulating.

"2) Bill Clinton went on the Rush Limbaugh show on the day of the Texas primary -- after Limbaugh had spent days urging GOP voters in the state to cross over and vote for Clinton in order 'rig' the election and ensure that Democrats nominated the weaker of their two candidates.

"3) The Clinton campaign has been circulating an article in The American Spectator alleging that an Obama adviser, former Air Force chief Merrill McPeak, is an anti-semite and a drunk.

"4) When Clinton attacked Obama on Jeremiah Wright, she did it at an editorial meeting of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the vanity publication of Richard Mellon Scaife, while sitting next to Scaife himself.

"Drudge. Limbaugh. The American Spectator. Richard Mellon Scaife. What exactly is it going to take before Clinton campaign staffers recognize that they are, in essence, now working for the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy?"

The Scaife sit-down alone, says Josh Marshall, "has to amount to some sort cosmic encounter like something out of a Wagner opera. Remember, this is the guy who spent millions of dollars puffing up wingnut fantasies about Hillary's having Vince Foster whacked and lots of other curdled and ugly nonsense. Scaife was the nerve center of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Those of us who spent years defending the Clintons from all that malarkey learned this point on day one."

I'm seeing more and more pieces like this one in the Boston Globe:

"Some Democratic Party leaders are growing more concerned that the protracted, caustic fight for the presidential nomination will cripple the eventual nominee, and there are new signs they have reason to worry . . .

"While the Democrats have been arguing almost daily the past two weeks about each other's electability and integrity, McCain has visited Iraq and other countries in the Middle East and Europe, received the blessing Tuesday of Nancy Reagan, and yesterday delivered a sweeping address on foreign policy."

The latest worry: a Gallup poll showing that 28 percent of Hillary backers would vote for McCain over Obama, and 19 percent of Obama supporters would defect to McCain.